To write, and to write about stuff that mattered to me, even if it strikes some as silly or lowbrow. The world changes fast, and life as we know it changes before we have time to register. William Bradley, “On Soap Operas, or, We Read and Watch Our Stories in Order to Live” “Is it […]
“To Temper Wit with Morality”: The Comforting Moral Fantasy of Instagram’s Celebrity Gossip Account, Deuxmoi
I spend a lot of time thinking about Hilary Duff and Mandy Moore and the fact that their babies are in the same baby music class. I was never even that into John Mulaney, but I can recite several TikTok theories about his relationship timeline with Olivia Munn and where exactly his ex-wife Anna Maria […]
Coconut Music: An Essay by My Imposter Syndrome
One of the TikTok idioms that the youths say these days is that so-and-so has “main-character energy.” Or they used to say it about a month ago or so. I don’t know if it’s still a thing. I can’t keep up. But it means, apparently, that so-and-so is living their life as if they were […]
My Dark Continent (A Book Report)
We know less about the sexual life of little girls than of boys. But we need not feel ashamed of this distinction; after all, the sexual life of adult women is a “dark continent” for psychology. Sigmund Freud, The Question of Lay Analysis They—the women, I mean—are out of it—should be out of it. […]
What We Drink in the Shadows
To say Gothic imagery has permeated popular culture is to say nothing particularly groundbreaking. There isn’t a mall in America without a Hot Topic or a meme page without a passing reference to Edgar Allen Poe (Spoiler alert: this essay won’t be about “The Cask of Amontillado,” internet hot as it is right now). If […]
On Charlotte Lucas and Terrible Gold Diggers Like Myself
Charlotte Lucas is one of the most tragic and realistic fictional characters in the Western canon. She is a terrible (or intrepid) gold digger who allies herself with an awful man to achieve independence. I use the term gold digger broadly and sympathetically here to include anyone looking for an easier life when selecting a […]